Revolutionary spontaneity

Short description: Belief that social revolution should occur spontaneously from the working class

Revolutionary spontaneity, also known as spontaneism, is a revolutionary socialist tendency that believes the social revolution can and should occur spontaneously from below by the working class itself, without the aid or guidance of a vanguard party and that it cannot and should not be brought about by the actions of individuals such as professional revolutionaries or political parties who might attempt to foment such a revolution.

In his work What Is to Be Done? (1902), Vladimir Lenin argued fiercely against revolutionary spontaneity as a dangerous revisionist concept that strips away the disciplined nature of Marxist political thought and leaves it arbitrary and ineffective.[1] Rosa Luxemburg, who defended spontaneity on Organizational Questions of the Russian Social Democracy, and the Spartacist League which had attempted to overturn capitalism during the 1919 German Revolution would become main targets of Lenin's attacks after World War I.[2]

## Mao-Spontex

The term Mao-Spontex refers to a political movement in the Marxist and libertarian movements in Western Europe from 1960 to 1970.[3] Mao-Spontex came to represent an ideology promoting the ideas of Maoism, along with some ideas from Marxism and Leninism, but rejecting the total idea of Marxism–Leninism. Lenin's work What Is to Be Done? especially is criticized as dated and Lenin's critique of spontaneity is rejected. Lenin's idea of democratic centralism is supported as a way to organize a party, but a party must also have constant conflict inside of it to remain revolutionary. The revolutionary party discussed must also always be from a mass worker's movement.[4]

## See also

* Anarchism
* Crowd psychology
* Impossibilism
* Invisible dictatorship
* Left communism in China
* Luxemburgism
* Spontaneous order
* Immediatism
* Spontis

## References

1. ↑ Lenin, Vladimir (1901). "The Spontaneity of the Masses and the Consciousness of the Social Democrats". What Is to Be Done?. http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1901/witbd/ii.htm. Retrieved 30 April 2019.
2. ↑ Kurasje Council Communism. "Spontaneity and Organisation". http://www.marxists.org/archive/mattick-paul/1949/spontaneity.htm.
3. ↑ Bourg, Julian (2017). From Revolution to Ethics, Second Edition: May 1968 and Contemporary French Thought. MQUP. p. 86. ISBN 978-0-7735-5247-0. https://books.google.com/books?id=h6Y6DwAAQBAJ&pg=PT86. "It did not take long for the GP-ists to become known as "Mao-spontex," or Maoist-spontaneists. The name was originally an insult—Spontex was the brand name of a cleaning sponge—intended to belittle the group's embrace of antiauthoritarianism as an element of revolutionary contestation. The marxisant tradition had long criticized spontaneism as an anarchistic error."
4. ↑ Lévy, Benny (1971). "Investigation into the Maoists in France". https://www.marxists.org/archive/levy-benny/1971/investigation.htm.

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